Dune

Just to prove I have more than 2 interests ...

Several months ago the movie Dune came on regular TV. (I refuse to pay to watch TV.) I actually have it on DVD, but that's besides the point.

Anyway, it triggered a desire in me to go back and read the books again, and I have to say that my impressions of the books have changed a lot from re-reading them as an adult.

Some of the concepts in the books would still be considered ahead of their time, even if they were written today.

Now, I do have to say that things like the spice, expanding consciousness, the church of Muad'Dib, these things feel very 60's to me

But in contrast, Herbert has some concepts which I will call "human hacking" for lack of a better word, which I think are still very relevant today, maybe even more so. So things like the prana-bindu, Mentats, and the Tleilaxu (from later books) feel modern.

I guess no discussion of Dune would be complete without mentioning Herbert's use of the third-person omniscient perspective and first-person narratives, so I'll just say the first time I read it, I hated it, the second through n-1 times I grew to accept it, and the nth time, I actually kind of liked it.